Newcastle beat their Latvian Intertoto opponents, FK Ventspils, last night thanks to a bullet header from Titus Bramble, still much of an enigma as a player, even though he's 25. The man who crossed the ball from the corner, Emre, had to go off after getting a boot in the thigh, but probably as a result of being so short, since most footballers have shinpads in place at that height off the pitch. However, much of the match was little to write home about and infront of a raucous home crowd, taking home a 1-0 away win seems a good result. The most interesting moments of the match actually came from the commentary of John Helm and John Barnes. They were meant to be joined by famous misogynist manager Joe Royle, but he was sandbagged by the airport kerfuffle and couldn't make it (showing the perils of coming out on the same day as the match, instead of exploring the host city; it's not as if he has a crowded schedule, being made unemployed by Ipswich and all). But the commentary was a class apart indeed - apart from top-class, that is. The first frissons was John Barnes questioning John Helm's sexuality, after Helm said Latvia's capital Riga is a beautiful city with very beautiful people. JB jibed "which ones, men or women, you just said 'people'" Helm refused to dignify that with a decent response and so stuttered one instead. I have to agree though that on the architecture and the women front (I didn't pay attention to the men) Riga blows you away, the women I would rate as the hottest in the world in one area, making Latvia number one followed by Moldova at number two and Mongolia at number three.
But back to the football. Noting that one of the players for FK Ventspils had joined from FC Vladivostok, Helm said "it's not often you get to talk about a player from Vladivostok on the pitch" (unless you live in Vladivostok) before proceeding not to talk about him further, while John Barnes amused himself (and no-one else), joking that they drink a lot of vodka in Vladivostok. Ouch! Not for the misbegotten butts of JB's humour, but for myself.
John Helm proved he is not of the calibre of his Motosn namesake with a string of unco-ordinated facts and in the wrong tone. Saying of Venstpils as if it was still a fact on the ground, it's "had German rule, Polish rule, Russian rule. Favourite drink- hot toddy" (rule?). The sudden burst left me disorientated trying to figure out how favourite drinks, hot toddy and overlordship fit together as I was expecting him to announce some homespun tale about the Latvians of the Courland peninsula heartwarmingly getting their independence as part of the Latvian nation as a whole. No such luck.
The approach of a Paris Hilton album is an event happening for critics. Her new release is relished by them as something succulent to sink their teeth into. Reading The Guardian today, I was enthralled by Alexis Petridis's account, like the dripping of liquid nitrogen onto a plastic rose. There are many scimitar slashings at 'Paris Hilton' (the name of the album), with a middle section acknowledging the professionalism, before returning to the scything. I can see critics the world over getting out their broadswords to hack this album down. The music industry supremos who did the 11 song set as their penance have marshalled top producers and writers to show at least they tried, which is commended by Petridis amidst his acid lines. At one point, he imagines them saying "a reggae song would be a good fit here." To mix this, they hire Shep Solomon who Petridis says is "famed for mashing up Kingston dancehalls with militant Rastafarian collective S Club 7". Dig that reggae jive.
Today was the last of the two consecutive days that there has been a French market in Gillingham. Selling their wares on the pedestrian precinct where the usual stallholders do their business on Saturdays and Mondays, it was refreshing to have some cultural exchange with our neighbours from across the Channel. Top French chefs maybe losing out to more refined Italian and Spanish cuisine masters for quality, but the smells emanating from the market today show that the ordinary French population hasn't lost that knack to cook well.